There’s a certain satisfaction in being a New Yorker, in particular a Manhattanite. The whole make-it-here-you-can-make-it-anywhere thing is our ethos. We’re a city of type-A personalities, willing to put up with a lot — noise, crowds, garbage, weirdos — to stake our claim to a tiny piece of Manhattan property.
But that tiny piece keeps getting tinier.
Mayor Bloomberg has announced a competition for architects to submit designs for apartments measuring under 300 square feet. He wants to lift zoning rules at a city-owned lot in Kips Bay to allow for construction of a building filled with these “micro-units.”
As if our units aren’t micro enough already.
It might seem like this proposal fits a need. After all, young people get off the proverbial bus in New York every day imagining they’ll live in a cute walkup apartment in “the Village” — only to find those units already in the hands of bankers, lawyers and celebrities. They might settle for a 300-square-foot apartment. But should they?
It’s one thing for doe-eyed kids to accept the tiny apartment as their home. It’s another for the mayor to encourage it.
For one thing, it sets a low bar for all future construction in Manhattan. Why make “luxurious” 500-square-foot studios (the average in Manhattan) when 300 will do?
For another, while it’s easy for the Upper East Side-residing mayor to forget about them, there are four other boroughs with ample space to house all the city’s new arrivals.
I grew up in Brooklyn, in the parts (Flatbush and later Bensonhurst) that don’t get exalting articles written about them, and lived to tell about it. Maybe we didn’t have artisanal pickle shops, or the latest cutting-edge designer stores, but we had space and lots of it. A 300-square-foot apartment would’ve been laughed at. In our immigrant community, your home was your pride.
There’s also spacious housing available in safe neighborhoods in The Bronx, Queens, even Staten Island. There’s no reason to pile more people onto the island of Manhattan.
I was one of those kids who moved into magic Manhattan, and stuck it out after marriage and even after our Sadie came along. But it just gets more impossible every year: Brooklyn is definitely in our future.
Mayor Bloomberg should focus on spreading the New York cachet to the other boroughs. Living in the city is tough enough without adding 300-square-foot bunkers to the mix.
Perhaps it’s time to rethink the pride that goes along with living in Manhattan. What are we winning, at the end of the day, when “micro units” start to seem reasonable to our mayor?
Karol Markowicz blogs at alarmingnews.com.
Twitter: @KarolNYC